After bloody year, Charlie Hebdo blames religion

PARIS — French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo will publish a provocative cover with a Kalashnikov-toting “god” character Wednesday for a special issue marking the one-year anniversary of a January 7 terrorist attack on its offices.

The cover, released on Monday, depicts a bearded figure whose robe is spattered with blood, running while carrying an assault rifle. The headline reads: “Un an après, l’assassin court toujours” — or, one year later, the assassin is still on the run.

The character, who also wears a triangle-shaped hat with an eye in its center, does not explicitly refer to a single religious figure. The hat is a winking reference to Masonic imagery and possibly conspiracy theorists, who published skeptical accounts of the Charlie Hebdo attack, in which 12 people were killed, just days after the murders.

However, the overall message is clear: Charlie Hebdo, in keeping with French traditions for no-holds-barred satire and aggressive anti-clericalism, is blaming religion for terrorism.

In an op-ed that will appear in Wednesday’s 32-page special edition, Charlie Hebdo owner and editor Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau delivered an impassioned defense of secularism explaining why the paper continued to publish despite the killings.

“In 2006, when Charlie published the Muhammad cartoons, nobody seriously thought this would end in violence,” he wrote. “We saw France as a secular island where it was possible to have fun, to draw, to have a laugh, without worrying about dogmas or fanatics.”

“How were we supposed to keep making the paper after all that happened?” added Riss, who signed the new issue’s cover illustration. “It’s everything that we’ve been through over the past 23 years that fuels our rage to do it.”

“The convictions of atheists and secular people can move more mountains than the faith of the religious,” he wrote.

Riss’ message comes after a year capped by the worst terrorist atrocity to strike France, the November 13 attacks that killed 130 people. Both the January and November attacks in Paris were claimed, or at least partly inspired, by the ISIL terrorist group.

The Charlie Hebdo attacks qualified France as the third-deadliest country for journalists after Iraq and Syria, according to French organization Reporters Without Borders.

The special edition magazine will include illustrations from victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, including Jean “Cabu” Cabut, George Wolinski, Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier, Bernard “Tignous” Verlhac, and Philippe Honoré.

Wednesday’s magazine will also contain contributions from prominent French figures ranging from French Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin to musician Ibrahim Maalouf.

The publication normally sells around 30,000 to 100,000 copies, but the edition after January’s attacks sold around 8 million copies. The publication will print one million copies for Wednesday in anticipation of another sales spike.